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Monday, January 25, 2010

I hurt

Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up in the morning and try to roll out of bed, only to be stopped by a tightly wound rope of pain? You know, those times when most of the muscles in your body contract like frightened turtles and bind you to the bed, and only a burst of willpower will release you from the sheets? Maybe you had a really hard workout the day before; or maybe you, I don't know, unintentionally did a cannonball off a small cliff, and instead of splashing down in a pool, you landed on a hard rock. That kind of pain.

But as you get up and stumble around your room, you notice that the dang addicting sun is still out. And you think that maybe what you're experiencing is just a little muscle soreness, the kind of thing you can push out with a few hard strokes on your bicycle. After all, it was just full-body contact with a rock from from five feet up. No need to be a baby about it.

And then, in a further stroke of brilliance, you decide to spin out the soreness on six miles of Mendenhall Loop road and then hit up the Lake Creek trail for a little "fun" snowbiking. You know, because the Lake Creek trail is usually a sheet of ice, and it's not like it rained a lot and then froze or anything.

Oh wait, yes it did.

But you forget about this small detail as you pedal gingerly along the pavement, thinking that this doesn't feel so bad. Those muscle pains aren't too hard to pound into submission. Then you hit the trail, and it quickly becomes obvious that it's a solid sheet of ice, so you put your foot down to turn around, and even though your tires were getting decent traction on the ice, that dang foot that slipped off the cliff yesterday just can't hold it together, and it skids backward and you and your bicycle tip over sideways.

And as you lay on the ground, with all of those sore muscles shrieking in a dissonant chorus of old and new pain, you start to wonder if your body really hates you, or maybe it's the other way around, because, really, what the hell were you thinking?

I usually wake up with sore shoulders and neck, stabbing chest pains (scar tissue and nerve damage) and at least one knee that doesn't want to participate. Its usually at that point that I remind myself that the body follows where the mind takes it and I go for a ride.

So well written! I'm still chuckling. You have such a gift for the written word, Jill. Thanks for keeping this blog going and keeping me enthralled for...what...4 years now? This post makes my hiney hurt :)

I feel your pain. With the Leslie 3 day weekend, I cram it in. A girls got to do what a girls got to do with what time she has! But yes, this morning and this afternoon after the visit to the Chiropractor, I was wondering what the hell I was thinking after the marathon on Friday, the long ski tour on Saturday and the 30k snow run on Sunday. The reality is I KNOW what I was thinking and wouldn't have it any other way: